Category Archives: Environment

Evacuation order issued for Condobolin; Albanese says renewables can fight inflation – as it happened

Posted on by

Lachlan River is at major flood level and SES predicts a record peak of 7.8 metres on Monday. This blog is now closed

Poppy seed tea warning

Australians are being warned not to drink poppy seed tea, promoted on popular social media platforms, after a spate of poisoning cases across Australia linked to the home-brewed sedative.

Continue reading...

NSW floods: Condobolin waits behind 3km wall of sandbags as record peak flows west from Forbes

Posted on by

Forbes mayor criticises decision to base recovery team in Parkes as towns and villages downstream wait days for peak

The New South Wales central-west town of Condobolin is experiencing the worst flood in its history and the expected peak is still days away.

The State Emergency Service has predicted the Lachlan River at the town 100km west of Forbes will peak at 7.8 metres on Monday – a record flood height. On Saturday afternoon an evacuation order was issued for low-lying parts of the town.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

What happened at Cop27 on day 11?

Posted on by

EU agrees to loss and damage fund to help poor countries and activists interrupting proceedings lose their passes

The biggest news of the day broke on Friday morning, with the announcement that the EU would agree to a loss and damage fund to help poor countries with climate disasters.

The climate summit will run until Saturday, according to Agence France-Presse. This is not really a surprise to anyone.

Youth activists staged a Friday climate strike to mark the last formal day of negotiations. Meanwhile during the talks, Nakeeyat Dramani, a 10-year-old Ghanaian climate activist, asked delegates to “have a heart”.

Elsewhere the activists who interrupted the US president, Joe Biden, lost their summit passes, as did the Ukrainian protester who spoke out at a Russian press conference.

A surprisingly large number of gas deals were struck at the summit, with more than a dozen set up.

And Desmog crunched the numbers and found that representatives from big agriculture more than doubled at Cop27.

Continue reading...

Summit to be extended to Saturday as talks remain gridlocked – as it happened

Posted on by

The European Union has backed a loss and damage fund, one of the key demands of developing countries at the climate talks

This liveblog is now closed

The low-lying Pacific island of Tuvalu has been reacting to the EU’s proposal on “loss and damage”. Its finance minister, Seve Paeniu, called for support for phasing out all fossil fuels, language so far missing from the draft Sharm el-Sheikh agreement.

He described the EU position on loss and damage as a “breakthrough”.

Continue reading...

EU reversal of stance on loss and damage turns the tables on China at Cop27

Posted on by

China is responsible for more cumulative emissions than any country other than the US

Late on Thursday night in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, the Cop27 UN climate talks seemed stuck in an irretrievable logjam. Rich and poor countries had reached deadlock, a “breakdown between north and south”, according to the UN secretary general, António Guterres.

By Friday morning, the talks had been upended and the battleground dramatically redrawn, in a way it has not been in 30 years of these annual talks. At stake is the question of whether some of the world’s leading economies – countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf petrostates, Russia and countries with high per capita income such as South Korea and Singapore – should start contributing for the first time to help the poorest and most vulnerable countries with the impacts of climate disaster.

Continue reading...

Cop27: EU agrees to loss and damage fund to help poor countries amid climate disasters

Posted on by

Change in stance puts spotlight on US and China, which have both objected to fund

A breakthrough looked possible in the deadlocked global climate talks on Friday as the European Union made a dramatic intervention to agree to key developing world demands on financial help for poor countries.

In the early hours of Friday at the Cop27 UN climate summit in Egypt, the European Commission vice-president, Frans Timmermans, launched a proposal on behalf of the EU that would see it agree to establishing a loss and damage fund.

Continue reading...

Cop27 president bemoans slow negotiations saying some countries failing to address urgency of climate crisis – as it happened

Posted on by

Egypt foreign minister Sameh Shoukry says delegates are shying away from taking ‘difficult political decisions’. This live blog is closed

As global politicians face difficult discussions on the draft over the coming hours, public opinion appears to be supportive of the idea that richer countries should pay loss and damage finances for climate action in poor countries.

Damian Carrington, our environment editor writes: A significant majority of people in the UK think the country has a responsibility to pay for climate action in poorer and vulnerable countries, an opinion poll conducted for the Guardian shows.

No details of a fund on loss and damage financing for poorer countries

“Welcomes” the fact that parties agreed for the first time to include “matters related to funding arrangements responding to loss and damage” on the summit agenda.

No call for a phase down on all fossil fuels

Stresses the importance of exerting all efforts to meet Paris Agreement goal of holding global average temperature to well below 2C and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 C

Continue reading...

New battery technology could be a ‘game changer’ for regional Australian communities

Posted on by

The CEO of Swiss company Energy Vault says its gravity storage technology can be built anywhere you can build a 20-storey building

The head of a Swiss energy company which has been contracted to build a solar storage battery in Victoria says its technology will be a “game changer” for rural communities because it can be built anywhere – provided the locals don’t mind having a structure that is as tall as a 20-storey building.

Energy Vault has pioneered a gravity energy storage system that uses surplus energy to raise 35-tonne blocks, made out of recycled materials, to the top of the tall battery structure. Energy is released by lowering those blocks.

Sign up to receive Guardian Australia’s fortnightly Rural Network email newsletter

Sign up for the Rural Network email newsletter

Join the Rural Network group on Facebook to be part of the community

Continue reading...

French hunter who killed man after ‘mistaking him for boar’ goes on trial

Posted on by

Calls for crackdown on hunt safety during trial of Julien Féral, who shot dead man outside home near Toulouse

A hunter who shot dead an Anglo-French man after allegedly mistaking him for a wild boar has gone on trial accused of manslaughter.

Morgan Keane, 25, was hit in the chest as he was cutting wood outside his home in a village north of Toulouse, in south-west France, two years ago.

Continue reading...

‘Asking an arsonist to put out a fire’: climate offender Maduro makes Cop27 comeback

Posted on by

Despite an abysmal environmental and human rights record, Venezuela’s president is back on the international stage

It is unclear whether Cop27 will have any real impact on efforts to halt climate change but one leader is likely to return from the international summit feeling that the trip to Egypt was well worth it: the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro.

After years of being frozen out of international relations the Latin American dictator used Cop27 to clearly – if controversially – demonstrate that he is back on the international stage.

Continue reading...

News live updates: Medibank, Optus among companies shunning privacy law hearing in ‘collective failure of corporate Australia’

Posted on by

Greens senator David Shoebridge has criticised notable absences at a Senate committee looking at privacy laws today. Follow the day’s news live

ADF personnel to help in NSW as government works on dedicated disaster workforce

Murray Watt is asked about a permanent disaster workforce to assist during national disasters and their clean-up, given the pressure put on the defence force.

The ADF does certainly play a role, particularly in the recovery phase. And just yesterday we activated more defence forces to go into western New South Wales to assist so over the next couple of days, we expect to see 200 defence force personnel helping there to top up these state-based services. But the reality is all of this is putting a huge amount of pressure, whether it be on those state-based services or the ADF. And that’s why in this budget, we committed over $30m to a volunteer veteran organisation called Disaster Relief Australia to sort of top up the kind of services that are available for communities, particularly in that clean-up phase.

But we’re going to be keeping on doing some work on this about what we need to put in place as a country to supplement the ADF and I’d be hopeful that we might be able to bring that to a conclusion around about the budget next year.

There’s insurance costs so let alone the huge damage bill that individuals are going to be incurring themselves.

So I think everyone is unfortunately going to be having to put their hands in their pockets for for this unfolding event that just won’t go away.

So even if we weren’t to get any more rain, we’re going to be looking at even more damage from the existing flood waters. And, as I say, I think we’re likely to see more. We’ve also got to remember that we haven’t yet seen the cyclone season start whether that be in north Queensland, Western Australia or Northern Territory. So unfortunately I haven’t got a lot of good news for people except for the fact that there is unlikely to be a lot of rain over the next couple of days. So that’s a good thing.

Continue reading...

Devastating floods in Nigeria were 80 times more likely because of climate crisis

Posted on by

Stark findings add pressure on Cop27 negotiators to deliver meaningful funding to vulnerable countries

The heavy rain behind recent devastating flooding in Nigeria, Niger and Chad was made about 80 times more likely by the climate crisis, a study has found.

The finding is the latest stark example of the severe impacts that global heating is already wreaking on communities, even with just a 1C rise in global temperature to date. It adds pressure on the world’s nations at the UN Cop27 climate summit in Egypt to deliver meaningful action on protecting and compensating affected countries.

Continue reading...

Lula vows to undo environmental degradation and halt deforestation

Posted on by

President-elect says he will work to save Amazon rainforest and key ecosystems in rousing Cop27 speech

President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has told the world that “Brazil is back” at Cop27, vowing to begin undoing the environmental destruction seen under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, and work towards zero deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.

Followed by a carnival atmosphere wherever he went on Wednesday, Lula told the climate summit that his administration would go further than ever before on the environment by cracking down on illegal gold mining, logging and agricultural expansion, and restoring climate-critical ecosystems.

Continue reading...

Lula says ‘Brazil is back’ as he vows to reverse Amazon deforestation – as it happened

Posted on by

Brazil’s president elect beat Jair Bolsonaro, under whose watch deforestation had rocketed, in last month’s election

This liveblog is now closed

A long-mooted deposit return scheme in the UK will not be in place for a further two years, the UK environment secretary said on Wednesday, writes Fiona Harvey, Guardian environment correspondent.

“It will be another couple of years at least,” Thérèse Coffey told journalists at Cop27. “Scotland has not started theirs yet. We are getting on with our environmental targets and a business plan and Elms. We are coming up to the fifth anniversary of the 25 year environment plan.”

Let’s talk to the secretary-general of the UN for the next op to be done in Brazil, in the Amazon. I think it is important that the people who defend the Amazon know the region and the concrete reality.

Continue reading...

Global heating to drive stronger La Niña and El Niño events by 2030, researchers say

Posted on by

New modelling suggests climate change-driven variability will be detectable decades earlier than previously expected

Stronger La Niña and El Niño events due to global heating will be detectable in the eastern Pacific Ocean by 2030, decades earlier than previously expected, new modelling suggests.

Researchers have analysed 70 years of reliable sea surface temperature records in the Pacific Ocean to model changes in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (Enso) under current projections of global heating.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

‘Paris agreement’ for nature imperative at Cop15, architects of climate deal say

Posted on by

Leaders say December biodiversity summit in Montreal is ‘unprecedented’ chance to turn tide on nature loss

The architects of the Paris agreement have urged world leaders to reach an ambitious sister deal for nature at the Cop15 biodiversity conference this December while warning that limiting global heating to 1.5C is impossible without protecting and restoring ecosystems.

On biodiversity day at the Cop27 climate conference in Egypt, Christiana Figueres, Laurence Tubiana, Laurent Fabius and Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who helped design the Paris agreement, said that Cop15 would be an “unprecedented” opportunity to turn the tide on nature loss.

Continue reading...

Proposed NSW disaster authority would have ‘virtually unfettered’ land-clearing powers, Greens say

Posted on by

Conservation groups have also condemned the legislation, with National Parks Association ‘extremely alarmed’

A proposed new natural disaster authority in New South Wales would have “virtually unfettered” powers to overturn environmental protections and could result in the clearing of national parks, crossbench MPs and environment groups have warned.

The state’s planning minister, Anthony Roberts, introduced a bill to parliament on Monday to create a “Reconstruction Authority” dedicated to disaster preparedness, recovery and reconstruction.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Lula faces backlash after flying to Cop27 on millionaire’s private jet

Posted on by

Brazil president-elect’s decision to fly on a jet owned by a health industry mogul criticised by both opponents and supporters

Brazil’s president-elect has faced a backlash at home after flying to the Cop27 environmental summit on a private jet owned by a millionaire businessman.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected on 30 October and has vowed to undo much of the environmental damage wrought by the outgoing far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Continue reading...

Fish passes give endangered twaite shad chance to swim up Severn River and spawn

Posted on by

Return of one of one of Britain’s rarest fish confirmed after DNA found in water samples above fish passes

For nearly two centuries, one of Britain’s rarest fish has been shut out of its spawning grounds by large weirs.

But the endangered twaite shad has now returned to its historic spawning habitat on the River Severn, thanks to four new fish passes that enable the migratory fish to negotiate weirs and swim up river to lay eggs.

Continue reading...

Climate activists throw black liquid at Gustav Klimt painting in Vienna

Posted on by

Pair attack Death and Life painting in Leopold Museum in protest against fossil fuel ‘death sentence’

Climate activists in Austria have attacked a painting by Gustav Klimt, with one throwing a black, oily liquid at it and another gluing himself to the glass covering the painting.

Members of Letzte Generation Österreich (Last Generation Austria) tweeted that they had targeted the 1915 painting Death and Life at the Leopold Museum in Vienna to protest against their government’s use of fossil fuels.

Continue reading...